Digital Marketing Resources
Okay, why should you use Facebook? • Worldwide, there are over 1.79 billion monthly active Facebook users (Facebook MAUs) which is a 16% increase year over year. (Source: Facebook as of 11/02/16) • To put this into context, the estimated population of the whole world is 7.4 billion people. Twitter, by comparison, only has 317 million monthly active users. And the audience keeps on growing… It is estimated that five new profiles are created every second! Making sense of the features It is important to understand the functions of the features you use, as each can help you create a unique kind of engagement. However, not all are applicable; what you’ll use depends on the nature of your work.
The Three Essentials The text box / Share a photo
At the top is the most common tool you’ll ever use on Facebook. Over the years it’s became more adaptable to your needs. First and foremost, it’s there to write a post. It has been suggested that maximum engagement comes from posts only 40 characters long. That’s less than a tweet! Other uses are sharing links to your website or to posts which may be of relevance to your audience. You can also use this to share photos and videos. Call to action button Most organisations will use this for mailing lists such as Mailchimp. This is a simple feature which allows people to sign up directly from your Facebook, rather than having to go through a few pages in the website. Alternatively other organisations have used this option as a way to link into ecommerce sites or bookings. Create an Event This is one of the most useful tools when trying to spread word of events you find yourself working on. Even just saying you’re interested in going to an event makes it pop up to other people and hopefully creates a snowball effect.
Establishing your narrative voice
In a desire to engage their audiences with the latest events, themes, opportunities or initiatives, arts organisations can often overload audiences with information. Information overload can confuse your visitor and be visually unappealing. A key aspect of engagement is to develop a consistent voice. Keep your posts simple and say it more than once, in different ways. Broadly speaking, content is effective when it appeals to either our head or our heart. We usually look for content to teach us something, inspire us to do something, to entertain us, or to make us feel a certain way. The head looks for information and inspiration; the heart looks for laughter or tears – the emotional connection.
Consider Your Content
One of the main pitfalls of using Facebook is a tendency to over-share information. Arts organisations can also fall into the trap of creating too much original content to promote their work when they don’t have time or resources to support this. A key strategy to address this is to shift from content production to content aggregation. There are 3 key approaches that you can consider to help you to do this. Identify themes: A good starting point is to identify different themes that relate directly (or indirectly) to the subject and find examples of good quality content created by other influencers. Aggregate this content and then share it on your social platforms. Commission content: Another approach is to commission content such as guest blog posts which link into your website or to share commissioned photographs, tagging the photographer and feeding into their audience. This is a useful technique to build relationships with influencers and sector specialists who have a large and active following on different social networks. It can also increase your reach and visibility online. Interact With Your Audience: Have you created ample opportunities for your audience to create content for a time-bound live event or in cases when they are in a physical location? One of the great features of Facebook is the Live function. It’s a good way to draw audience in even if they can’t attend or weren’t initially aware of an event.
Manage Your Time A key element in using social channels effectively and maximising your time is to separate real-time activity from scheduled activity. There are a few variations of this. If your organisation is built around one key annual event or Festival, there may be scope to schedule up to three Facebook posts a day (morning, noon, evening) in the two or three months leading up to the event or Festival period. However, for an organisation which is more active throughout the year, like an arts centre or a community cinema, it’s more manageable and reasonable to expect two or three posts a week – e.g., Monday, Wednesday, Friday.
Encourage Audience Participation An effective approach to promote deeper engagement is to create opportunities for participation. This is also useful to create new and memorable experiences for your online audience. These opportunities for participation are most effective when accompanied by a give-away that asks users to “Like” & “Share” the post to increase exposure. However, this can become problematic and could be considered spam, so try not to rely too much on this. Another way to promote a competition is to perhaps tie it in with an audience survey or an upcoming event.
Useful Tips There are a few simple tips when posting on Facebook. Along with short amounts of text, cleaner copy can help you achieve maximum exposure. Tagging fellow organisations Tagging other organisations into your posts will alert them to the post – in hopes they will share it themselves. It’s also a good opportunity to tag funders and stakeholders at the bottom of a post. No URLs needed When linking to your website or external site in a Facebook post, paste the link in then just delete the URL out. You won’t lose the link at the bottom and it looks cleaner. Customise the link A dummy window will appear once a URL is pasted into the FB post. You can change the text, the title and even upload a different picture. Photos and videos Arts organisations can offer some of the most visual content. Professional photography and videography is often catalogued. Share it; use it. It’s great to share photos and videos from your phone, but make sure the built-in camera is of decent quality and the content itself is relevant. Boosting Ah yes. The Boost. A vital tool to be used sparingly for big events and announcements. Online advertising is where Facebook raise their revenue. It can work very well, but use with caution.
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